


Appointments and Disappointments

by nnozomi



Category: The Marlows - Antonia Forest
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 20:04:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3181409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nnozomi/pseuds/nnozomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“I expect it’ll be Pippin. You’d like to be head girl, wouldn’t you, Pippin?” / “Yes, I would,” said Pomona stolidly. “And when I am you’ll have to call me Pomona</i> always.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Appointments and Disappointments

The twins’ autumn half-term was graced with what was these days a highly unusual phenomenon, half the family home at once. Rowan was still spending most of her weekends at Trennels—for all the new young farm manager, Theo Wainwright, came from farming stock in Norfolk and with glowing recommendations from Cirencester, she didn’t care to hand over the conn entirely quite yet—and Ginty had put in one of her unpredictable appearances too. Unkindly, Rowan suspected that these irregular visits on Ginty’s part had usually to do with her laundry, her stipend, or the status of her flatmate’s boyfriend (or possibly her boyfriend’s flatmate), but it was, thankfully, not her problem.

Nicola and Lawrie, not yet admitted to the dubious freedoms of university, seemed to be thriving in the Upper Sixth. Rowan had wondered if Nick would end up following in Karen’s and Ann’s footsteps as Head Girl, but apparently she was _much_ happier as Games Captain. (Scholarship or no scholarship, even Miss Keith wasn’t mad enough to pick Lawrie as anybody’s head girl; it was a ruddy miracle she was even a prefect.) If not Nick, that West child who was such a close friend of hers had seemed likely, but in the event it had turned out to be another of their mates, with the unlikely name of Pomona something. “You _must_ remember her from when we were in Third Remove!” Lawrie said, but Rowan could honestly say she didn’t have a clue; among the twins’ school friends it was only those close enough to be invited back for half term, Miranda West and Lawrie’s Tim and once the quiet, rather lovely one who was Daks’ owner, Esther whatever, whom she could keep straight.

“It’s a funny thing,” Nicola said thoughtfully, tucking into bacon and eggs with all the trimmings, “but she’s actually a quite good Head Girl, Pippin. Much better than Val Longstreet—“

“ _That_ wouldn’t be difficult,” said Rowan and Ginty, more or less in unison.

“—or Sara Birdsall even.”

“Who?”

“Last year. I shouldn’t think you’d remember her, she never seemed to do anything but study for Geog exams, head girl or no.”

Although the Dodds were safely ensconced in Colebridge, everyone politically refrained from drawing any parallels.

“Anyway,” Lawrie resumed, with her mouth full (“Lal, _please”_ ), “the horrible little brats (“Look who’s talking!”) actually listen when Pippin tells them to pipe down. And she doesn’t get flustered like some.”

“Pippin couldn’t fluster if you ordered her to point blank,” Nicola opined, helping herself to the last slice of toast.

“I wanted it to be Tim, though,” Lawrie said mournfully. “Imagine how _different_ everything would have been. More _exciting_.”

“Don’t be damfool, Lal. No sensible headmistress is likely to appoint Her Niece head girl.”

“Why not? They do it all the time in all those school stories.”  
“Well, I never read them when we were little,” Nicola shrugged. Her reading before they went to Kingscote, indeed, had been dominated by Arthur Ransome; then she’d moved on to Hornblower, and lately, if Rowan recalled correctly, had been devouring Patrick O’Brian novels and waiting impatiently for the next in the series, to which she’d been introduced by Edwin Dodd of all people. “ _I_ thought it would be Miranda.”

“Why wasn’t it?” Ginty wanted to know. Having just about settled in at Reading after the initial but-I-wanted- _Oxford_ fuss, she seemed to have made the best of things to the extent that Kingscote (where the head girl of her own Upper Sixth year had been not her best friend Monica, as everyone had expected, but their colleague Emma something) was once again an object of interest. “She always seemed quite horribly competent at everything. The born Head Girl, one would think.”

Nicola and Lawrie looked at each other.

“Tim says—“ Lawrie began.

“I _know_ what Tim says, but honestly I don’t _believe_ it, it’s not as if she actually overheard anything, she’s just speculating—“

“Yes, but you know she’s nearly always right about Her Auntie—“

“Well, I still think it was the swimming pool. Miranda says, with them you’re damned if you do and—“

“But she didn’t actually _want_ to be—“

“No, of _course_ she didn’t, who _would_ , she just thinks it’s a bloody stupid way of—“

“No stupider than not making Tim it because she’s—“

“Will the two of you answer a person’s question!” Rowan broke in, at quarterdeck volume.

“Tim says—“ Lawrie began again, heroically.

“There’s one theory,” Nicola drowned her out, “that it was because she’s Jewish. Miranda, I mean. I just don’t think the facts bear it out—Miranda’s a prefect now, and she’s been a form prefect practically every year, and in the Play, and she’s leader of the orchestra, and the powers that be don’t seem to mind any of that.”

“Peggy what’s-her-name—Levy—was form prefects with Ann more terms than not,” Ginty recalled.

“Yes, exactly. And then there’s another theory that says it’s on account of Miranda’s father paying for—well, giving a lot of money to the school.”

“And that’s a reason _not_ to make her head girl?” Ginty said sceptically.

“Miranda thinks it’s _just_ possible—that Keith wanted to look whiter-than-white just in case someone accused her of letting parents buy the Head Girlship, if you will. Which is _bonkers_ , because I don’t think Mr. West even knows what a head girl is.”

Rowan, agreeing _quite, quite mad_ almost aloud, decided she had been better out of the whole thing than she knew.

 

The announcement of her newly exalted status as Librarian had given Miranda cause to recall, wryly, her onetime pronouncement to Nick: _and if they made_ me _librarian instead of Head Girl or Games Captain_ which _she should be, I’d tell them they could …_ She had considered it, and in the end decided to eat her words.

It was undeniable that there was something appealing in following Jan’s path; as well, she liked the library and felt that―with a bit of due diligence―there was no reason she couldn’t manage the modest responsibilities thereof without disturbing her other obligations and pleasures. The Head Girl’s single room she did, honestly, regret a bit, but viewed with a long eye, this was the last year she’d ever have to share a room with anyone she didn’t choose to; it wasn’t worth making a fuss over.

Most of all, thinking it all over in bed at night, she was forced to conclude that Jan had drawn the short straw in her yearmates―or at least in those Keith had found worthy of being elevated to high positions. If she, Miranda, had been made librarian while seeing Head Girl and Games Captain go to a drip like Val Longstreet or a heel like Lois Sanger…well.

Nick as Games Captain was the most copper-bottomed blinking obvious dead cert there’d ever been, after all, short of her sister Ann’s erstwhile Head Girlship; she’d be good at it and she’d really like doing it. Endearingly, Nicola was so pleased that all her efforts to be blasé and modest couldn’t quite conceal her glow, and Miranda found herself able to be genuinely and unshadowedly happy on her behalf.

Which was a relief, honestly. She considered herself an altogether different species from the Lois Sanger type of heel, but there were heels and heels, and Miranda was uncomfortably aware that her mother’s acid edge was something she had inherited in full measure.

One breaktime in the Lower Sixth, with Lawrie answering gloomily to Miss Ferguson’s demands regarding her last essay and Nicola off on apple-and-milk duty, Tim had said unexpectedly to Miranda, “Have you heard of _l’esprit de l’escalier?_ ”

As it happened, she had, although only in writing; after a moment to parse Tim’s elegantly genuine French, she said “Yes, and?”

“I was just wondering what it’s called when you wish you _hadn’t_ said something.”

Surely a first in Tim’s experience, Miranda thought uncharitably, and turned her French O-level A grade to the matter. “ _L’esprit de l’ascenseur_?” she offered, and had the satisfaction of making Tim laugh so much that she was still incapable of speech when Nicola and Lawrie came back.

While not inclined to partake of _esprit de l’escalier_ any oftener than she had to, Miranda felt she would rather do her best to avoid the stomach-dropping sensation of _l’esprit de l’ascenseur_ , and that it was as well to cultivate her mental state accordingly. Tim’s approach to life…could not really be called heelishness; there was a certain Tim-quality which was on another plane altogether. Miranda preferred to avoid that plane, if she could, and so was grateful that Nick’s happiness made her truly happy instead of inclined to stinging nettles.

As for the Head Girl, the appointment of Pomona was the first thing that had ever made her wonder if Miss Keith had a sense of humor after all. Pomona herself, asked by ribald classmates what her stance was on the matter, had shrugged stolidly and said that she s’posed Keith had to pick _someone_. One couldn’t exactly argue with that. And it was helpful that, by the Upper Sixth, their classmates were sufficiently far advanced not to wonder aloud “But why not…?”. In any case, Miranda had spent enough time not only in class and on the cricket pitch with Pomona but also sitting across from her in orchestra rehearsals to be well aware that Pippin had a clear head, an almost unshakeable calm, and a not unduly inflated opinion of herself, which seemed like a good set of qualifications.

 

The subject arose, inconveniently, at tea with her parents and Esther. Most unexpectedly, her mother had taken rather a fancy to Esther during that winter visit; she expressed this by not actually appearing pained when Mr. West suggested having Esther back again some day. Miranda took advantage of this unusual circumstance to invite Esther over for the day during half term.

“And are you a prefect too, Esther?” Mr. West asked kindly, over the scones.

“Oh _no_ —“ Esther blushed and twisted her napkin in her lap. “I’m not anything—“

“She’s in all the First Senior teams,” Miranda provided, disentangling her father’s desire to treat any guest pleasantly from Esther’s to be generally invisible. “Netball captain, actually, or did you forget that, Esther?”

Miss Craven’s opinion—reported in a rooftop summit, as they’d taken to calling their meetings _a deux_ there, by a Nicola still finding her feet—had been that Nicola would have her hands quite full enough as Games Captain, not to mention with the cricket team in the spring, while she, Miranda, ought to prepare herself to captain the tennis team when the time came. This, while along the lines of a foregone conclusion, was still a pleasant piece of news, and she and Nicola had exchanged congratulations before beginning to wonder if Esther would _manage_ as netball captain. The consensus as of half-term was that, if she could be got to stop considering _every_ aspect of a lost (or even close) match her own personal failure, she might just.

Esther, kindly reminded of this fact, looked rather as if she would indeed have liked to forget it, but nodded and returned to her natural color, and even—a social leap that would have been inconceivable for the Esther of Lower IVA—managed to ask Miranda’s mother whether she had played any sports at school.

While Miriam West embarked on a trenchant description of Jewish girls’ day schools a generation and a half earlier, Miranda reflected on the concept of Esther-as-prefect. Miss Keith’s usual rabbit-potting behavior would have suggested Esther straight off the bat, surely. Was it an un-Keith-like moment of mercy that had prevented any such thing, or simply the fact that the number of prefects was necessarily limited and their year contained a surprising number of strong personalities?

To her relief, Esther proved to be too tactful or too timid or both to ask why Miranda hadn’t been sent to her mother’s old school, or rather its successor. _Upward social mobility_ would have been the most honest answer (and, within the family, you could never tell when Miranda’s mother was going to be inspired to be brutally honest), not in terms of money—it was her great-grandfathers on both sides who had made good—but of being on the up and up with the Gentiles, or _the goyim_ as one didn’t say in their presence. Even if they were still disinclined to make one Head Girl.

Esther wouldn’t have a clue, most likely, even if Miranda were to try to explain—although you never knew with Esther, she had the most unexpected air-pockets of worldliness—but anyway it wasn’t worth it, certainly not here and now. Nick would understand, but she’d be embarrassed at how far outside her own experience the whole thing was. (Would there have been anyone remotely like Nick to be friends with, at a Jewish girls’ school? She must ask her mother sometime, during one of their détente periods.)

Of everyone at school, it was probably Tim—oddly enough—who would understand the whole thing best. Not just the particular discomfort caused by finding oneself seemingly barred from candidacy for something which one genuinely did not want, but the whole tangle of belonging- not-belonging-above-below-same-different which had been the silent background to Miranda’s life at school. _Jan_ , she thought unguardedly, and tucked the edge of thought back into the place where she kept it for moments of privacy; not here, not with her parents, not with Esther, trustworthy as she was.

Miranda looked across Esther’s latterly serene beauty at her mother’s neat sharp features, unmistakably her own, and thought suddenly of something she had read last year for their Lower Sixth Project. _And then I remembered, with a startling sense of relief, that…there was only a brief interval between darkness and darkness in which to fulfill obligations, both to individuals and society, which could not be postponed to the comfortable futurity of a compensating heaven._

Far from the way it had been originally meant, of course, but it was indeed both startling and deeply comforting to remember that the obligations of Kingscote, complex and close-binding as they were, belonged indeed only to a brief interval in the grander scheme. Jan had always known that, of course, she thought, and smiled to herself and began to listen to what her mother and Esther were talking about.

 

“I _do_ think it’s tiresome of Edith to have you take on this Head Girl thing,” said Pomona’s mother plaintively, to an audience of her daughter (spreading marmalade on toast), her husband (reading the _Financial Times_ ) and her niece-by-courtesy (poking uninterestedly at a plate of kippers). “Pomona darling, you have _so many_ talents. Why ought you to have to waste your energy minding a crowd of grubby little schoolgirls?”

Tim, experiencing what she had read somewhere as _the natural ennui of having her beliefs authorized by a tiresome woman_ , looked over to see what Pomona would find to say to this one. Typically, Pippin didn’t rise at all; she glanced up blandly, said “I don’t expect Miss Keith will change her mind now,” and went back to the painstaking process of creating an even layer of marmalade across every inch of her toast.

“Expect it’ll go over well at university interviews,” said Mr. Todd rather absently. “If the A-Level grades come out all right, of course. How about you, Tim, what A-Levels are you going in for?” Unlike his wife he did not follow the Thalian party line, which Tim appreciated.

“English, French, and History,” she said. Kingscote would never dream of offering an A-Level in Drama, which Tim minded less than Lawrie did. At least the French, in Barby Wateridge’s congenial company, ought to be a walk in the park— _une promenade au parc_ , Tim told herself experimentally. Or perhaps _un morceau de gâteau._

“We’ve got History together,” Pomona volunteered unexpectedly, and then apparently heard what she’d said and raised her eyebrows solemnly at Tim, who winked back, tickled.

 “Why didn’t you take Latin along with Pomona, Thalia dear?” Mrs. Todd asked. “It would have made a nice match with your French.”

“Oh well, I thought English would be more useful in the real world. It’s not as if I’ll need to look up the lyrics to Medieval Masses and things like Pippin is.” Pomona had surprised her form last year, with the possible exception of Miranda, by announcing the intention to go into musicology and choosing her A-Levels accordingly.

“I wish—“ Pomona herself began, at the same time as her mother started “I _do_ wish—“ They paused in confusion, and Tim said hastily to Pomona “What did you say?”

“Oh. I wish Kingscote hadn’t dropped German, is all. I’ll need that more than Latin if anything.”

“ _Du schwindelst dich durch_ ,” said Tim helpfully. “I expect it’s one of those things you can study at university.”

“P’raps so,” said Pomona, going back to her marmalade with a decidedly _revenons á ces moutons_ air.

Mrs. Todd nibbled at her crispbread. “Thalia dear, are you going in to see your father this afternoon?”

“I thought I would,” Tim said stiffly. “If there’s a bus at the right times.” Her father had, inconsiderately, developed a hernia needing surgery just at the time of half-term, and the Todds had offered to host her and been accepted before she had had a chance to suggest that Lawrie invite her to Trennels.

Truly, she was just as glad being in the same London as her parents, even this inconveniently bucolic corner of London, as not. It was so unknown for her father to be ill that she had allowed her inner Lawrie—as it were—to run away with her, and pestered him and her mother both until he finally exploded: “I’m not in the habit of letting the sawbones lie to me, or for that matter telling lies to you and your mother, so will you please find yourself satisfied with the information you have! Would you like to see the bloody X-rays, or what?”

“Bloody in a purely coprolalic sense I _do_ hope,” Tim had retorted, letting the silly word distract her from the need to cry.

That had been the end of that—she was, in fact, fairly convinced that her parents were not actually keeping a cancer diagnosis secret, and that it was no more and no less than they said—but she was still on edge. She knew, and had not quite gone so far as to admit to herself out loud (as it were) that Pippin’s placid calm was more reassuring, in this context, than Lawrie’s volatility or Nick’s embarrassed good will could have been.

“I expect Martin will drive you in,” Mrs. Todd went on, notably not volunteering herself.

“I can,” said Pomona, inserting the last triangle of toast into her mouth and wiping her fingers painstakingly.

Tim stared. “You _drive_?”

“I was seventeen last year. Same as you were actually. Daddy taught me last summer.”

“… _Well,”_ said Tim.

“It would be a boon if you’d do the driving today, in fact,” Mr. Todd said to his daughter. “There’s a Test Match on the radio this afternoon…”

“Oh _really_ , Martin,” Mrs. Todd sighed.

“Would you mind, Pippin?” Tim asked hastily, seeing her chance both to arrive during visiting hours and to avoid a wilderness of cricket.

Pomona’s response, this time, was overrun by her mother’s. “Thalia _dear_ , I _do_ wish you’d give up using that terrible childish nickname. It’s such a _shame_ , when you both have such lovely given names…”

“Oh, I don’t know, Aunt Melly,” Tim said deliberately. “I think ‘Head Girl Pippin’ has quite a ring to it, don’t you? It’s—“ remembering Third Remove—“quite a liking sort of name.”

She was surprised to see Pomona turn as pink, and look as pleased, as she had done when told for the first time.

**Author's Note:**

> Mrs. Todd's first name (not here given in full) and the idea of the opposite of _esprit d'escalier_ come from fics by Lilliburlero, who I hope will forgive the unauthorized borrowing.  
>  Miranda quotes from _Testament of Youth_ by Vera Brittain, and Tim from a murder mystery by Susannah Stacey (the later slightly anachronistic, but I couldn't resist).


End file.
